DRAMATIC ADVENTURE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 35, 30 March 1942, Page 6

DRAMATIC ADVENTURE

THREE BLIND NAZIS

Hitler lias conquered many countries, Ave are told, but the truth is that these countries are preparing! to conquer him. In their future history lie will he nothing but a foul memory, states an English exchange. All the Avorld knows how grateful the people of the enslaved lands arc when they see the R.A.F. flying over them, and how heroically they display their sympathy should one of them come down. All the world knows how German bullies sneak about the streets of these oppressed lands, fearful for their lives, and we have been reading that some of them are so anxious to know the real truth about Europe that they encourage the people to listen to' the BBC in or<,lcr ty. .ttll them the news. It is imprisonment or death if they are caught listening, but they listen. Everywhere the V sign is seen abroad, promise of the day of Victory; and everywhere the industrial slaves go sloav in factories, and Avork is wrecked by sabotage. The Invisible Army All tills work goes on ' quietly, secretly, but in one of the oppressed countries there is open Avarfare of the most dramatic kind. It is in Yugo-Slavia, Avhose King Peter has made himself so popular among us. The Serbians lia\ r e formed a regular fighting army Avhich is proving a thorn in Hitler's side. It is led by Colonel MihailoAUch, an expert in guerilla Avarfare, avlic has reorganised the broken regiments of the old army and, led them into the mountains, Avhere they hold a strong position. They are known as the Invisible Army. When the telephone line of Belgrade is cut and the German commander calls it sabotage,, it is the Invisible Army that has been at work. When Nazi soldiers are found dead in the street, it is the Invisible Army. When the Germans announced the death of General Schroeder they forgot to say that he Avas stoned in the streets of Belgrade by the agents of the Invisible Army. When 25,000 Germ:m troops are withdrawn from the Russian Front to go to Belgrade, it is the Invisible Army that makes it necessary.

Nazi Appeal Ignored A German General broadcast on 0 September 14 that Serbia Avas on the verge of civil war with robber g bands cutting railway lines so that cnot a single line could be kept safe t for distributing food. He begged all <5 Serbian soldiers to return home, and -j promised that no reprisals would be f taken. But nobody trusts a German j anywhere. £ Finding it hard to fight an army j they cannot see and cannot reach v fin army reckoned at 100,000 troops, j the Germans tried to negotiate a peace in October, and one midnight j Dokich and two officers climbed up Ei footpath in the mountains outside ( Belgrade and kept an appointment that had been made for them for a , twelve-hour armistice. The three , Germans had promised to come unarmed, and did so. At a lonely point ten armed Serbians suddenly appeared, and the Germans were told that they would be led blindfold to the headquarters of the Invisible Army. They were led for two hours along 0 mountain road, and at last found themselves in the presence of Colonel Mihailovich. The Germans told him that his conduct was illegal, and that he had broken the word cf the Yugoslavian Army Avhcn it capitulated. The Serbian colonel said lie did not wish to go into the question of whether a German had any right to protest against a broken word, but he himself had broken no word. Tt was the Yugo-iSlavian Army that had capitulated; but the Germans had broken their Avord by breaking up Serbia and creating an independent Croatia, and it was now the Serbian Army that was fighting and refused to be beaten. Tt would not cease its struggle until Germany capitulated or the last Serbian Avas dead.

Doughty Heroes The talk lasted two hours and all the German bargaining failed to move tlie Invisible Army. 1 lie thiol. Germans were blindioldeil and 1 ode baek to their starting point, and the war goes on, a war within a "war, one of the most dramatic battlefields in Europe. The Invisible Army controls about one quarter ol" all Yugo-Slavia, and its men are anions the doughtiest heroes in the Allied armies. How eagerly they must await the day when the Allies will come knocking at the back door of Hitler's Europe, and, having (lung the Nazis out of Africa, will drive them back to where they came from.